Three home day cares were shut down after state evaluations came out and it became known they all had registered sex offenders living in the house.

All three were in the Albuquerque area.

“This information was a great concern to us,” said Henry Varela, spokesman for New Mexico’s Children, Youth and Families Department. “It prompted us to do an immediate investigation of these three households.”

The information was revealed in an evaluation by the Legislative Finance Committee.

There are about 4,000 CYFD-registered home day cares across the state.

In an effort to avoid this problem in the future, CYFD said every few months a list of sex offender addresses will be compared side-by-side with home day care sites.

“Because these addresses of these registered home care providers are listed as protected sites, sex offenders cannot live in those households,” said Varela.

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Beginning next year, there will be more scrutiny for sex offenders.

“If they put down an address, that happens to match with one of our home care providers address, when we run that report on a weekly basis it will immediately let us know that and then we can jump into action,” said Varela.

CYFD said the new cross-checking system will take some time to start up. It will combine Department of Public Safety and CYFD information.

It should help ensure a sex offender can never list a home day care as his address.

Previously, only the day care provider had a background check.

Any other people in the home were only screened through protective services.